November 10, 2008

Obama + Our Reform Movement

"I
am a supporter of your Change Congress movement and have followed your
work for a long time. I am also an Obama supporter. I am writing to
urge you to share your thoughts with your blog readers about what an
Obama administration might entail for the Change Congress movement, and
whether you think Obama is committed to government reform...."

Great question. I think many of us are so used to disappointment,
we're looking for it, and so not even a week after that extraordinary
night, many are beginning to wonder what "change" here will really mean?

But I think we need a certain kind of understanding, or patience
here. Imagine, by analogy, a loved one has cancer. She decides to get
chemo-therapy to deal with the cancer. But on the way to the hospital,
imagine she gets hit with a bullet from a drive-by shooting. (Dark, ok,
but you'll see the meaning here in a second). Now an ambulance comes
and races this gun-shot victim with cancer to the emergency room.

This sad story is a picture of us just now. The "change Washington"
rhetoric of this campaign is the analog to the cancer. The financial
collapse is the analog of the shooting. And just as with the cancer
patient, the collapse is an urgent, immediate problem that must be
solved before the more fundamental, long term problem can be addressed.

This means we have to be a bit patient before the more fundamental
issue gets addressed. Not that one shouldn't be critical of decisions
that will make it more difficult to cure the cancer. But that the lack
of an immediate push on that problem is not inconsistent with the
design to cure it.

I only hope they recognize that as with the gun-shot, cancer victim,
there needs to be essentially two teams thinking about these two
different kinds of problems. One focusing immediately on stabilizing
the patient. The second on how the stable patient can be treated for
the cancer. The skills of the former team are not necessarily the
skills of the latter. And if Obama is to be the transformational
president he can be, building a strategy around that transformation
will be essential.

Comments

"I
am a supporter of your Change Congress movement and have followed your
work for a long time. I am also an Obama supporter. I am writing to
urge you to share your thoughts with your blog readers about what an
Obama administration might entail for the Change Congress movement, and
whether you think Obama is committed to government reform...."

Great question. I think many of us are so used to disappointment,
we're looking for it, and so not even a week after that extraordinary
night, many are beginning to wonder what "change" here will really mean?

But I think we need a certain kind of understanding, or patience
here. Imagine, by analogy, a loved one has cancer. She decides to get
chemo-therapy to deal with the cancer. But on the way to the hospital,
imagine she gets hit with a bullet from a drive-by shooting. (Dark, ok,
but you'll see the meaning here in a second). Now an ambulance comes
and races this gun-shot victim with cancer to the emergency room.

This sad story is a picture of us just now. The "change Washington"
rhetoric of this campaign is the analog to the cancer. The financial
collapse is the analog of the shooting. And just as with the cancer
patient, the collapse is an urgent, immediate problem that must be
solved before the more fundamental, long term problem can be addressed.

This means we have to be a bit patient before the more fundamental
issue gets addressed. Not that one shouldn't be critical of decisions
that will make it more difficult to cure the cancer. But that the lack
of an immediate push on that problem is not inconsistent with the
design to cure it.

I only hope they recognize that as with the gun-shot, cancer victim,
there needs to be essentially two teams thinking about these two
different kinds of problems. One focusing immediately on stabilizing
the patient. The second on how the stable patient can be treated for
the cancer. The skills of the former team are not necessarily the
skills of the latter. And if Obama is to be the transformational
president he can be, building a strategy around that transformation
will be essential.